Former Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers has been laying low with her family in Spokane after completing a 20-year congressional career. She's still contemplating her next professional stop, but it will leading her new non-profit foundation, The Cathy McMorris Rodgers Leadership Institute.
Cathy McMorris Rodgers: The Leadership Institute is really driven out of a desire to pour into a next generation of leaders across the board, but especially high school, college students. I find myself reflecting on my time in Congress, and you know, coming from Kettle Falls, farm kid, first in my family to graduate from college. I'm so grateful for all the mentors that I had and people who took time to mentor me, as well as leaders that I looked up to, and opportunities that I had that really made a difference in my life, and I want to be part of it as a desire to provide more opportunities for leadership development.
She says the idea was spurred by former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who created his own organization after leaving Congress as a way of staying engaged in public life.
CMR: I've spent time during my years in Congress visiting high schools, and talking with students about our Constitution, about our form of government, why America really is unique, that at the founding of our nation nearly 250 years ago, it was a revolutionary idea at the time that we were created equal and that's laid out in our Declaration of Independence, and just what America has represented to the world. We’re not perfect, but you look over the last 250 years, America has done more to lift people out of poverty, raise the standard of living more than any other nation in the world and wanting to talk to them about my perspective and the opportunities that I had, but also just being a representative.
